Bt Brinjal The scope and adequacy of the GEAC environmental risk assessment

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54 Bt Brinjal: The GEAC environmental risk assessmentcritical to specify the existing technology carefully or else come double counting may result.Several works allow total or partial farm budgeting to estimate the marginal value of Bt brinjal and Brinjal IPM. Fullcost accounting is done only for IPM in West Bengal (Alam et al. 2006). Total variable costs are evaluated for IPM (Alamet al. 2006 (Gugarat), Baral et al. 2006) and Bt brinjal (Krishna and Qiam 2008). Partial accounting is done here using theinformation presented above.Net return on variable costs is reported in Table 5. The IPM results are the most accurate ones in the table. They arecalculated on-farm, based on what farmers actually do and what farmers actually obtained while growing brinjal. All of theBt values are probably overestimates of the true value of the technology. Krishna and Qiam (2008) base their results on theMahyco MST experiments, which greatly overestimate the value of Bt brinjal (as detailed above). However, Krishna and Qiam(2008) recognise that the yield values reported in the MST experiments are unrealistically high, so they reduce these yield valuesarbitrarily. Specifically, they halved the yield advantage of hybrid Bt brinjal reported in the MST (although they state thatthey use 40%, the actual values reported in their table 2 belies this statement) for use in their economic model. This is morereasonable than the approached used by EC-II and the Dossier to discuss yield advantages of hybrid Bt brinjal. However, asnoted in Table 4 above, this is not enough of a reduction and the predicted yield benefit is still substantially less than that usedby Krishna and Qiam (2008).In addition, Krishna and Qiam (2008) assumed a 75% reduction in insecticide use against BFSB, which is considerablylarger than that estimated above from the LST experiments above and double-counts some of the gains possible using IPM.Thus, Krishna and Qiam (2008) have overestimated the net return for Bt brinjal. Although the actual net returns cannot trulybe known until after Bt brinjal has been approved for commercial use, the results estimated above for the yield benefit from Btbrinjal (Table 4) and the average reduction of 6.5 sprays in large-scale commercial brinjal production can be used to generate amore accurate estimate of net return for Bt brinjal. Even this value is probably overestimated, as discussed above. To estimatenet return, brinjal prices reported in Krishna and Qiam (2008) were used, Rs.462/q in East India and Rs.421/q elsewhere. Inaddition, Rs.500/ha was used as the cost of a single application of insecticide, which is the average value calculated from data inAlam et al. (2006). The net returns for Bt brinjal in West Bengal are placed in brackets because Bt brinjal is not allowed in thisregion (Table 5).
Socioeconomic Analysis 55These data (Table 5) bear the conclusion that Krishna and Qiam (2008) have over-estimated the value of hybrid Bt brinjalby about 2-fold. West Bengal presently forbids the commercial use of Bt brinjal. Krishna and Qiam (2008) presume that thiswill be overturned. Their estimate of an increase in net return of Rs.44,074/ha for Bt brinjal assumes that small-scale resourcepoorfarmers will adopt hybrid Bt brinjal at a similar rate as large-scale commercial producers (Krishna and Qiam 2007). Theprevious discussion in this report provides many reasons to expect that small-scale resource-poor farmers will adopt at a lowerrate than large-scale commercial farmers. Kolady and Lesser (2005) show to the contrary that small-scale resource-poor farmersare predicted to adopt hybrid Bt brinjal at a lower rate than large-scale commercial producers. Finally, Krishna and Qiam (2007,2008) rely on farmer’s “stated preferences” for hybrid Bt brinjal after being given expected benefits of hybrid Bt brinjal based onthe Mahyco MST experiments. These inflated benefits may have induced many small-scale resource-poor farmers to state thatthey would use hybrid Bt brinjal. In addition, it is well known that a stated preference is higher than a realised preference. Inother words, people say they will do something at a much higher rate than they actually do it. Thus, it is unlikely that Krishnaand Qiam’s (2008) results for West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are accurate for small-scale resource-poor farmers,and may only apply to large-scale commercial producers. Even considering only large-scale commercial producers, however,Krishna and Qiam’s (2008) estimates for net return are probably twice the realistic return for hybrid Bt brinjal (compare theirRs.44,074 and Rs.40, 276 to the more accurate Rs.23,439). Overall, it is more likely that hybrid Bt brinjal will increase netreturns for large-scale commercial producers by at most Rs.23,439/ha and for small-scale resource-poor producers by at mostRs.3,250/ha; these estimates do not double count potential reductions in insecticide use.These data (Table 5) also show that brinjal IPM has been vastly more profitable than projections for hybrid Bt brinjal.Brinjal IPM has been about 3-times more profitable than Bt brinjal is projected, and has directly improved profitability of smallscaleresource-poor farmers. Converting 1.5Tk. = 1.0Rs., IPM has returned Rs.34,575 – Rs.94,506/ha in eastern India andBangladesh and Rs.82,963/ha in Gujarat. Averaging across these estimates, brinjal IPM has increased profitability for the smallscaleresource-poor farmers who have used it by Rs.66,794/ha. Moreover, as will be discussed below, farmers will retain moreof the benefit from IPM than they would retain from Bt brinjal.Clearly, compared to hybrid Bt brinjal, a national policy that promotes theproven technology of brinjal IPM (such as ICAR 2006) would provide greaterfinancial benefits to the millions of small-scale resource-poor farmers in Indiaat reduced risk to the farmers and the environment. Brinjal IPM is also likelyto improve profitability of large-scale commercial producers. While hybrid Btbrinjal may improve profitability of large-scale commercial producers over andabove the benefits from brinjal IPM, it is not likely to improve profitability ofsmall-scale resource-poor farmers significantly. To set a rational national policyon brinjal pest control, economic information on traditional BFSB controlpractices, organic production, and integrated use of neem-based insecticidesis also needed. GEAC should consider the need for hybrid Bt brinjal in thecontext of other comparable agricultural technologies.Finding 28. The estimated economic surplus for brinjal IPM is significantly larger than for hybrid Bt brinjal.Farmers are expected to receive 63% of the surplus from brinjal IPM but only 10% of the surplus from hybrid Btbrinjal. Increased public investment, greater promotion, and strengthened public policy for brinjal IPM relative to thosefor hybrid Bt brinjal will result in greater social benefits in India and a major increase in profitability for small-scaleresource-poor farmers.A technology that causes a large improvement in crop yield and is adopted by many farmers will increase the supply ofthe crop thereby depressing its price. At the depressed price, farmers will benefit less from having used the technology, butconsumers will benefit from the reduced cost of food. The economic surplus is an estimate of the total social value of thetechnology and is based on projected technology adoption rates, changes in crop supply, and changes in crop price to the
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Table of Contents 1Bt Brinjal Event
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Table of Contents iBt Brinjal:The s
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Summary and Conclusion 1Summary an
Page 7 and 8: Summary and Conclusion 3The EE-1 t
Page 9 and 10: Summary and Conclusion 5Event EE-1
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Page 13 and 14: Context and Need 9standards for ER
Page 15 and 16: Context and Need 11and seek to incr
Page 17 and 18: Context and Need 13the reported yie
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Page 21 and 22: Characterisation of Transgene 17wor
Page 23 and 24: Characterisation of Transgene 19In
Page 25 and 26: Characterisation of Transgene 21Sci
Page 27 and 28: Environmental Risk Assessment 23Gen
Page 29: Environmental Risk Assessment 25thi
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Bt Brinjal The scope and adequacy of the GEAC environmental risk assessment

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